Famous Sea Fights Part 2

While the preparations were being made, the Romans renewed their entreaties that their leader would rather stake his fortunes on a battle on land. One day a veteran centurion of his guard, who bore the honourable scars of many campaigns, addressing him with tears in his eyes, said to Antony: "Imperator, why distrust these wounds, this sword? Why put your hopes on wretched logs of wood? Let Phoenicians and Egyptians fight on the sea, but let us have land on which we know how to conquer or die." It is the appeal that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of one of Antony's soldiers:--

"O n.o.ble emperor, do not fight by sea; Trust not to rotten planks. Do you mis...o...b.. This sword and these my wounds? Let the Egyptians And the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we Have used to conquer standing on the earth, And fighting foot to foot."[3]

[3] "Antony and Cleopatra," Act iii, scene 7.

The sight of the Egypto-Roman fleet crowding down to the narrows with their sails bent on their yards showed that they meant to risk putting to sea, and Octavian embarked on Agrippa's fleet, with picked reinforcements from the legions. For four days the wind blew strongly from the south-west and the blockaded fleet waited for better weather. On the fifth day the wind had fallen, the sea was smooth and the sun shone brightly. The floating castles of Antony's van division worked out of the straits, and after them in long procession came the rest of the Roman, Phoenician, and Egyptian galleys.

From the hills to the northward of the straits, from the low-lying headland of Actium to the south, two armies, each of a hundred thousand men, watched the spectacle, and waited anxiously for the sight of the coming battle.

The Western fleet had steered to a position off the entrance formed in two divisions, the one led by Agrippa, the other by Octavian. Agrippa, whose experience and record of naval victory gave him the executive command, had no intention of risking his small s.h.i.+ps in the narrows, where they would have been opposed by an equal number of heavier s.h.i.+ps, more numerously manned, and would lose whatever advantage their superior handiness and seaworthiness gave them, through having no room to manoeuvre. He kept his fleet of four hundred triremes sufficiently far from the sh.o.r.e to avoid the shelving shallows that fringe it near the entrance to the straits, and to have ample sea-room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMAN WARs.h.i.+PS _After the paintings found at Pompeii_]

For some time the fleets remained in presence of each other, both hesitating to begin the attack. Antony knew that his slower and heavier s.h.i.+ps would have the best chance acting insh.o.r.e and on the defensive, and Agrippa was, on the other hand, anxious not to engage until he could lure them out seaward, where his light craft would have all the gain of rapid manoeuvring.

It was not till near noon that at last the Western fleet closed with the Allies. The s.h.i.+ps that first encountered were nearly all Roman vessels, for the Egyptian and Asiatic squadrons were not in the front line of Antony's fleet, and the brunt of the attack fell upon the sluggish giants that had been so elaborately fortified with booms in the water and towers and breastworks on their decks. As the attacking s.h.i.+ps came into range, arrows, javelins, and stones flew hurtling through the air from the line of floating castles, missiles that did not, however, inflict much loss, for the men on the decks of the attacking fleet crouched behind bulwarks or covered themselves with their oblong s.h.i.+elds, and their bowmen made some show of reply to the heavier discharge of engines of war on Antony's s.h.i.+ps and to the more rapid shooting of the Asiatic archers. The days were still far off when sea fights would be decided by "fire," in the sense of the discharge of projectiles.

Could the tall s.h.i.+ps have rammed the smaller and lower galleys of Octavian and Agrippa they would certainly have sent them to the bottom--a sunken s.h.i.+p for each blow of the brazen beak. But attempts at ramming were soon found by Antony's captains to be both useless and dangerous. It was not merely that their lighter and nimbler opponents easily avoided the onset.

The well-trained crews evaded every attempt to run them down or grapple them, chose their own distance as they hovered round their huge adversaries, and presently as they gained confidence from impunity, began successfully to practise the manoeuvre of eluding the ram, and using their own bows, not for a blow against the hull of the heavier s.h.i.+p, but to sweep away and shatter her long oars, that were too heavy to be saved by drawing them in or uns.h.i.+pping them. Successful attack on the oars was equivalent to disabling an adversary's engines in a modern sea-fight. And when a s.h.i.+p was thus crippled, her opponents could choose their own time to concentrate several of their s.h.i.+ps for a joint attempt to take her by boarding.

The unwieldy s.h.i.+ps of Antony's first line, with their half-trained and untrained crews, must have formed a straggling irregular line with large intervals as they stood out to sea, and it was this that gave Octavian's fleet the opportunity for the worrying tactics they adopted. Had the Egyptian and Phoenician s.h.i.+ps come to the support of the leading line, their more sailor-like crews might have helped to turn the scale against Octavian. But while the fight was yet undecided and before the Egyptian squadron had taken any part in it, a breeze sprang up from the land, blowing from the north-east. Then, to the dismay of Antony's veterans who watched the battle from the headland of Actium, it was seen that the Egyptians were unfurling their sails from the long yards. The signal had been given from Cleopatra's stately vessel, which as the battle began had rowed out to a position in the midst of the Egyptian squadron, and now shook out her purple sails to the breeze, silken fabrics of fiery red, that seemed at first glance like a battle-signal. But in battle sails were never used and s.h.i.+ps trusted entirely to the oar, so to set the sails meant plainly that the fight was to be abandoned.

Driven by her silver-tipped oars, helped now with the land breeze that swelled her sails, Cleopatra's galley pa.s.sed astern of the fighting-line on its extreme left, and sixty of the wars.h.i.+ps of Alexandria followed their queen. Those who watched from the land must have hoped against hope that this was a novel manoeuvre, to use the breeze to aid the squadron of their allies to shoot out from behind the main body, gain the flank of the enemy, and then suddenly let the sails flap idly, furl or drop them, and sweep down with full speed of oars on the rear of the attack, with Cleopatra leading like Artemisia at Salamis. But the "serpent of old Nile" had no such ideas. She was in full flight for Alexandria, with her wars.h.i.+ps escorting her and conveying the wealth that had been embarked when it was decided to put to sea. Was her flight an act of treachery, or the result of panic-stricken alarm at the sight of the battle? But even her enemies never accused her of any lack of personal courage, and there are many indications that it had been arranged before the fleet came out, that, as soon as an opportunity offered, Cleopatra with a sufficient escort should make for Egypt, where several legions were in garrison, and where even if the army now camped beside the Ambracian Gulf could not be extricated from its difficulties, another army might be formed to prolong the war.

But the withdrawal of the sixty s.h.i.+ps threw the odds of battle heavily against the rest of Antony's fleet. And matters were made worse by its leader suddenly allowing his infatuation for the Queen of Egypt to sweep away all sense of his duty to his comrades and followers and his honour as a commander. As he saw Cleopatra's sails curving round his line and making for the open sea, he hastily left his flags.h.i.+p, boarded a small and swift galley, and sped after the Egyptians.

Agrippa was too good a leader to weaken his attack on the main body of the enemy by any attempt to interrupt the flight of the Egyptian squadron. When he saw the galley of Antony following it, he guessed who was on board, and detached a few of his triremes in pursuit. Antony was saved from capture only by the rearward s.h.i.+ps of the fugitive squadron turning back to engage and delay the pursuers. In this rearguard fight two of the Egyptian wars.h.i.+ps were captured by Agrippa's cruisers. But meanwhile Antony's galley had run alongside of the royal flags.h.i.+p of the Egyptian fleet, and he had been welcomed on board by Cleopatra.

By this time, however, he had begun to realize the consequences of his flight. Half an hour ago he had stood on the deck of a fighting s.h.i.+p, where comrades who had made his cause their own were doing brave battle against his enemies. Now, while the fight still raged far away astern, he found himself on the deck of a pleasure yacht, glittering with gold and silver, silk and ivory, and with women and slaves forming a circle round the Queen, who greeted him as he trod the carpeted deck. He made only a brief acknowledgment of her welcome, and then turned away and strode forward to the bow, where he sat alone, huddled together, brooding on thoughts of failure and disgrace, while the royal galley and its escort of wars.h.i.+ps sped southward with oar and sail, and the din of battle died away in the distance, and all sight of it was lost beyond the horizon.

The withdrawal of the Egyptians was a palpable discouragement to all the fleet, but not all were aware that their leader, Antony, had shared Cleopatra's flight. Some of those who realized what had happened gave up all further effort for victory, and leaving the line drove ash.o.r.e on the sandy beach of Actium, and abandoning their s.h.i.+ps joined the spectators from the camp. Others made their way by the strait into the great land-locked haven of the Gulf. But most of the fleet still kept up the fight. The great s.h.i.+ps that drifted helplessly, with broken oars, among the agile galleys of Agrippa's Liburnian sailors, or that grounded in the shallows nearer the sh.o.r.e, were, even in their helplessness as s.h.i.+ps, formidable floating forts that it was difficult to sink and dangerous to storm. More than one attempt to board was repulsed with loss, the high bulwarks and towers giving an advantage to the large fighting contingents that Antony had embarked. Some of them had drifted together, and were lashed side to side, so that their crews could mutually aid each other, and their archers bring a cross fire on the a.s.sailants of their wooden towers.

Some s.h.i.+ps had been sunk on both sides, and a few of the towered wars.h.i.+ps of the Eastern fleet had been captured by Agrippa, but at the cost of much loss of life.

To complete the destruction of the Antonian fleet, and secure his victory, Agrippa now adopted means that could not have been suddenly improvised, and must therefore have been prepared in advance, perhaps at the earlier period, when he was considering the chances of forcing a way into the Gulf.

Fire was the new weapon, arrows wreathed with oiled and blazing tow were shot at the towers and bulwarks of the enemy. Rafts laden with combustibles were set on fire, and towed or pushed down upon the drifting sea-castles.

s.h.i.+p after s.h.i.+p burst into flame. As the fire spread some tried vainly to master it; others, at an early stage, abandoned their s.h.i.+ps, or surrendered. As the resistance of the defeated armada gradually slackened, and about four o'clock came to an end, it was found that a number of s.h.i.+ps had taken refuge in the narrows and the Gulf; others were aground on the point; a few had been sunk, some more had surrendered, but numbers were drifting on the sea, wrapped in smoke and flame. Some of these sank as the fire reached the water's edge, and the waves lapped into the hollow hull, or the weight of half-consumed upper works capsized them. Others drifted ash.o.r.e in the shallows, and reddened sea and land with the glare of their destruction far into the night.

For the men who had fought, the victory, complete as it was, had an element of disappointment. They had hoped to secure as a prize the treasures of Cleopatra, but these had been spirited away on the Egyptian fleet. But for the commanders, Octavian and his able lieutenant, there was nothing to regret. The battle had once more decided the issue between East and West, and had given Octavian such advantages that it would be his own fault if he were not soon master of the Roman World.

Within a few days the remnant of the defeated fleet had been surrendered or burned at its anchors. The army of Canidius, after a half-hearted attempt at an inland march, and after being further weakened by desertions, declared for Octavian, and joined his standards.

Cleopatra had entered the port of Alexandria with a pretence of returning in triumph from a naval victory. Laurel wreaths hung on spars and bulwarks, flags flew, trumpets sounded, and she received the enthusiastic greetings of Greeks and Egyptians as she landed. But the truth could not be long concealed, and under the blight of defeat, linked with stories of leaders deserting comrades and allies, Antony and Cleopatra failed to rally any determined support to their side when the conqueror of Actium came to threaten Egypt itself. Both ended their lives with their own hands, Cleopatra only resorting to this act of desperation when, after breaking with Antony, she failed to enslave Octavian with her charms, and foresaw that she would appear among the prisoners at his coming triumph in Rome.

2 September, B.C. 31--the day of Actium--is the date which most historians select to mark the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire. The victor Octavian had already taken the name of his grand-uncle, Caesar. He now adopted the t.i.tle of Augustus, and accepted from army and senate the permanent rank of Imperator, inaugurating a system of absolutism that kept some of the forms of the old Republic as a thin disguise for the change to Imperialism.

On the height where he had camped before the battle, Nicopolis, the City of Victory, was erected. The ground where his tent had stood was the marble-paved forum, adorned with the brazen beaks of conquered wars.h.i.+ps.

The temple of Apollo, on the point of Actium, was rebuilt on more ambitious lines, and on the level expanse of sandy ground behind it, every September, for some two hundred years, the "Actian games" were held to celebrate the decisive victory.

Augustus did not forget that to the fleet he had owed his success in the civil war, and naval stations were organized and squadrons of wars.h.i.+ps kept in commission even in the long days of peace that followed his victory.

They served to keep the Mediterranean free from the plague of piracy, and to secure the growing oversea commerce of the Empire which had made the Mediterranean a vast Roman lake.

CHAPTER III

THE BATTLE OF SVOLD ISLAND

A.D. 1000

In the story of the battles of Salamis and Actium we have seen what naval warfare was like in Greek and Roman times. It would be easy to add other examples, but they would be only repet.i.tions of much the same story, for during the centuries of the Roman power there was no marked change in naval architecture or the tactics of warfare on the sea.

We pa.s.s, then, over a thousand years to a record of naval war waged in the beginning of the Middle Ages by northern races--people who had, independently of Greek or Roman, evolved somewhat similar types of s.h.i.+ps, but who were better sailors, though for all that they still used the s.h.i.+p not so much as an engine of war as the floating platform on which warriors might meet in hand-to-hand conflict. Norseman, Dane, and Swede were all of kindred blood. The land-locked Baltic, the deep fiords of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the straits and inlets of the archipelago that fringes its North Sea coast, were the waters on which they learned such skill in seamans.h.i.+p that they soon launched out upon the open sea, and made daring voyages, not only to the Orkneys and the Hebrides, and the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland, but the Faroes, and to still more distant Iceland and Greenland, and then southward to "Vineland," the mainland of America, long after rediscovered by the navigators of the fifteenth century.

There is a considerable intermixture of Norse blood in the peoples of Great Britain and Ireland, and perhaps from this sea-loving race comes some of the spirit of adventure that has helped so much to build up our own naval power. When Nelson destroyed and captured the Danish fleet at Copenhagen, the Danes consoled themselves by saying that only a leader of their own blood could have conquered them, and that Nelson's name showed he came of the Viking line.

A chronicler tells how Charlemagne in his old age once came to a village on the North Sea sh.o.r.e, and camped beside it. Looking to seaward he saw far out some long low s.h.i.+ps, with gaily painted oars, dragon-shaped bows, and sails made of brightly coloured lengths of stuff sewn together and adorned with embroidery along the yard. Tears came to his eyes as he said: "These sea-dragons will tear asunder the empire I have made."

They were Viking cruisers, on their way to plunder some coast town; and the old Emperor's prophecy was verified when the Norman, who was a civilized Norseman, became for a while the conquering race of Europe. Even before the death of Charlemagne the Norse and Danish sea-kings were raiding, plundering, and burning along the coasts of his Empire. Two hundred years of our own history is made up of the story of their incursions. England and Ireland bore the first brunt of their onset, when they found the ways of the sea. But they ravaged all the western coasts of Europe, and even showed themselves in the Mediterranean. From the end of the eighth till the beginning of the eleventh century they were the terror of the western world, and early in that dark and stormy period their raids had grown into great expeditions; they landed armies that marched far inland, and they carved out princ.i.p.alities for themselves.

Western Europe had a brief respite at times when the Vikings fought amongst themselves. In early days there were frequent struggles for supremacy in Norway, between local kinglets and ambitious chiefs. Fighting was in the blood of the Northmen. Two sea-roving squadrons would sometimes challenge each other to battle for the mere sake of a fight. As Norway coalesced into a single kingdom, and as the first teachers of Christianity induced the kings to suppress piracy, there was more of peace and order on the Northern Seas. But in this transition period there was more than one struggle between the Scandinavian kingdoms, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. One of the most famous battles of these northern wars of the sea-kings was fought in this period, when the old wild days of sea-roving were drawing to an end, and its picturesque story may well be told as that of a typical Norse battle, for its hero, King Olaf Tryggveson, was the ideal of a northern sea-king.

Olaf was a descendant of the race of Harold Haarf.a.ger, "Fair-haired Harold," the warrior who had united the kingdom of Norway, and made himself its chief king at the close of the ninth century. But Olaf came of a branch of the royal house that civil war had reduced to desperate straits. He was born when his mother, Astrid, was a fugitive in a lonely island of the Baltic. As a boy he was sold into slavery in Russia. There, one day, in the marketplace of an Esthonian town, he was recognized by a relative, Sigurd, the brother of Astrid, and was freed from bondage and trained to arms as a page at the Court of the Norse adventurers who ruled the land. The "Saga"

tells how Olaf, the son of Tryggva, grew to be tall of stature, and strong of limb, and skilled in every art of land and sea, of peace and war. None swifter than he on the snow-shoes in winter, no bolder swimmer when the summer had cleared the ice from the waters. He could throw darts with both hands, he could toss up two swords, catching them like a juggler, and keeping one always in the air. He could climb rocks and peaks like a mountain goat. He could row and sail, and had been known to display his daring skill as an athlete by running along the moving oars outside the s.h.i.+p. He could ride a horse, and fight, mounted or on foot, with axe or sword, with spear or bow.

In early manhood he came back to Norway to avenge the death of his father Tryggva, and then took to sea-roving, for piracy was still the Norseman's trade. He raided the sh.o.r.es of the Continent from Friesland to Northern France, but most of his piratical voyages were to the sh.o.r.es of our own islands, and many a seaboard town in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland saw Olaf's plundering squadron of swift s.h.i.+ps. Five was the number of them with which he visited the Orkneys.

The Viking wars.h.i.+ps were small vessels. The s.h.i.+p dug out of the great grave mound at Sandefjord, in Norway, and now shown at Christiania, is seventy-seven feet long, with a beam of seventeen amids.h.i.+ps, and a depth of just under six feet. Her draught of water would be only four feet, and she would lie very low in the water, but her lines are those of a good sea boat. She had one mast, forty feet high, to carry a crossyard and a square sail, and she had thirty-two oars, sixteen on each side. It says something for the seamans.h.i.+p of the Northmen that it was with s.h.i.+ps like this they sailed the Atlantic waves off the west coast of Ireland, and made their way by the North Sea and the verge of the Arctic to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, and the mysterious "Vineland."[4]

[4] Some interesting light was thrown upon the voyages of the Nors.e.m.e.n by a practical experiment made in 1893. A Viking s.h.i.+p was built on the precise lines and dimensions of the ancient s.h.i.+p dug out of the mound of Gokstadt in 1880, 77 feet long with a beam of 17 feet, and was rigged with one mast and a square mainsail and jib foresail. As a prelude to her being shown at the Chicago Exhibition she was successfully taken across the Atlantic under sail and without an escorting s.h.i.+p. She left Bergen on May 1st, 1893, and arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., on June 13th. She was commanded by Captain Magnus Andersen, who in 1886 had performed the feat of crossing the Atlantic in an open boat. Andersen had a crew of eleven men in the Viking s.h.i.+p. He reported that she had met with some bad weather and proved an excellent sea boat. Her average speed was nine knots, but with a fair wind she did eleven. In the following year the s.h.i.+p was accidentally sunk in the Chicago river, and raised and broken up.

Raiding in the Irish Sea, Olaf Tryggveson made a stay in a harbour of the Scilly Islands, and there he became a convert to Christianity. On the same voyage he married the Countess Gyde, sister of his namesake, Olaf Kvaran, the Danish King of Dublin. It was while he was staying in Ireland with the Dublin Danes that he heard news from Norway that opened larger ambitions to him. The land was divided among many chiefs, and the most powerful of them was hated as an oppressor by the people, who, he was told, would gladly welcome as their king a leader as famed as Olaf Tryggveson, and representing the line of Harold the Fair-haired. Helped by the Danes of Ireland, he sailed back to Norway, to win its crown for himself, and to cast down the wors.h.i.+p of Thor and Odin, and make the land part of Christendom.

In the first enterprise he was quickly successful, and in 995 he was recognized as King of Norway at Trondhjem. During the five years that he reigned he devoted much of his energy to the second part of his mission, and made among his countrymen many real converts, and found still more ready to accept external conformity. Sometimes he would argue, exhort, appeal to the reason and the goodwill of chiefs and people. But often the old Viking spirit of his pagan days would master him, and he would hack down with his battle-axe the emblems and the altars of Thor and Odin, and challenge the old G.o.ds to avenge the insult if they had the power, and then tell the startled onlookers that if they were to be loyal to him and live in peace they must accept the new and better creed.

The open sea and the deep fiords running far into the hills were the best highways of his kingdom, and Olaf spared no effort to maintain a good fighting fleet, the best s.h.i.+ps of which lay anch.o.r.ed before his great hall at Trondhjem when he was at home. When he went out to war his path was by the sea. He hunted down the pirates and destroyed their strongholds in the northern fiords, with none the less zeal because these places were also the last refuge of the old paganism and its Berserker magicians.

He had built for his own use a s.h.i.+p called the "Crane" (_Tranen_), longer than s.h.i.+ps were usually made at the time, and also of narrower beam. Her additional length enabled more oars to be used, and her sharp bow, carved into a bird's head, and her graceful lines made her the fastest s.h.i.+p in the fiords when a good crew of rowers was swinging to the oars. A good rowing-boat is generally a bad sailer, but Olaf had made the "Crane" swift enough under canvas, or to speak more accurately, when her sails of brightly dyed wool were spread. She was given high bulwarks, and must have had more than the usual four-foot draught of water, for she carried plenty of heavy stone ballast to stiffen her under sail. With the "Crane" as his flags.h.i.+p, Olaf sailed northward to attack the Viking Raud, pirate and magician, who held out for the old G.o.ds and the old wild ways. Raud had another exceptionally large s.h.i.+p, the longest in Norway, and till the "Crane" was built the swiftest also. The bow, carved into a dragon's head and covered with brazen scales, gave Raud's s.h.i.+p the name of the "Serpent"

(_Ormen_). As Olaf sailed northward Raud and his allies met him in a skirmish at sea, but soon gave way to superior numbers, and Raud, when he steered the "Serpent" into the recesses of Salten Fiord, thought he had shaken off pursuit, especially as the weather had broken, and wild winds, stormy seas, and driving mists and rain squalls might well make the fiord inaccessible to Olaf's fleet. Raud sat late feasting and drinking, and in the early morning he still lay in a drunken sleep when the "Crane" slipped into the fiord despite mist and storm, and Olaf seized the dragon s.h.i.+p and made Raud a prisoner almost without striking a blow.

When the King returned to Trondhjem he had the two finest s.h.i.+ps of the north, the "Crane" and the "Serpent," the latter the largest, the former the swiftest vessel that had yet been launched on the northern seas. Proud of such weapons, he wondered if he could not build a wars.h.i.+p longer than the "Serpent" and swifter than the "Crane," and he consulted his best s.h.i.+pbuilder, Thorberg Haarklover, i.e. the "Hair-splitter," so named from his deftness with the sharp adze, the s.h.i.+pwright's characteristic tool in the days of wooden walls. Thorberg was given a free hand, and promised to build a s.h.i.+p that would be famous for centuries. This was the "Lang Ormen,"

or "Long Serpent," a "Dreadnought" of those old Viking days. She was 150 feet long, and her sides rose high out of the water, but she had also a deep draught. The bow, strengthened with a cut-water of steel, was fas.h.i.+oned like the head of a huge dragon, the stern carved into a dragon's tail, and bow and stern were covered with scales of gold. She had sixty oars, and her crew was made up of no less than six hundred picked men, among them warriors whose names live in history.

For a while Olaf, with his great s.h.i.+ps, reigned victoriously over Norway, defeating more than one effort of the old pagan Vikings to shake his power.

One of these defeated rivals, Erik Jarl (Earl Erik), took refuge in Sweden, gathered there a number of adherents who had like himself fled from Norway to avoid Olaf's strong-handed methods of reform and conversion, and with them sailed the Baltic, plundering its coasts in the old Viking fas.h.i.+on.

King Svend of Denmark was jealous of the power of Norway, welcomed Erik at his Court, and gave him his daughter's hand. Svend's queen, Sigrid, was a Swedish princess, and Erik set to work to form a triple league against Norway of which the three branches would be his own following of Norwegian malcontents and the Swedes and Danes.

Olaf had spent the summer of the year 1000, with a fleet of sixty s.h.i.+ps, in the South-Eastern Baltic. Autumn was coming, and the King was preparing to return home before the wintry weather began, when news arrived that hastened his departure. It was brought by one of his jarls, Earl Sigvald, who came with eleven s.h.i.+ps, manned by his clansmen, and reported that the rebel Erik had been joined by the kings of Sweden and Denmark, and the three fleets of the allies were preparing to fall upon Olaf on his homeward voyage. But Sigvald a.s.sured the King that if he would allow him to pilot the Norwegian fleet he would take it safely through channels deep enough for even the "Long Serpent," and elude the hostile armada, which outnumbered Olaf's fleet three to one.